RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: Haemoglobin estimation is one of the most important clinical investigations. Many techniques are available to measure haemoglobin; still there is a need for a haemoglobin assay technique which is cheap, robust and simple and can be used in field conditions very quickly using figure prick sample. We evaluated a cyanmethaemoglobin-based haemoglobin estimation using a microtitre plates for the purpose. METHODS: Microtitre plate-based haemoglobin estimation was developed using cyanmethaemoglobin-based assay and was compared with standard haematology analyser-based haemoglobin estimation in a large number of samples from a population of voluntary blood donors. Various tests were performed to evaluate the stability of colour, variation of the results during duplicate assay on the same days and on different days as well as linearity of the test was performed against broad range of haemoglobin values for the new microtitre plate-based technique. Standard statistical test of significance was applied to validate the assay. RESULTS: Total 200 samples from in-house and field conditions were evaluated. 10 µL blood sample in 300 µL Drabkin's solution provided optimum and comparable results after 10 minutes of incubation. The colour was stable up to 6 hours, the coefficient of variation was less than 3%, and the cost per test including everything was less than 3 cent/2P. Turnaround time for 90 samples was only 30 minutes. CONCLUSION: Cyanmethaemoglobin-based assay in microtitre plate is feasible, robust, rapid, cheap and cost-effective method for haemoglobin estimation in field conditions.